Wednesday, November 04, 2015

How Democrats Suppress The Vote

But when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression...

Scheduling elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy
aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like
teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election’s outcome...

For readers who are sympathetic to the perspective of the off-cycle
election proponents (typically Democrats), it is worth noting that these
are very much the same arguments
that Republicans might make in favor of voting restrictions that make
voting a little bit harder for the average American. Just like voter ID
or voter-registration requirements, off-cycle elections impose a cost on
political participation. The cost is evidently high, since very few
people participate in local elections when they are held in odd-numbered
years. Maybe the cost leads to a more enlightened electorate. Or maybe
it is Democratic-sponsored voter suppression.

Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton made a speech about voting rights
in which she said, “Republicans are systematically and deliberately
trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting. What part of
democracy are they afraid of?” For Democrats like Clinton who are
apparently aghast at Republican efforts at voter suppression, today is a
good day to take a look in the mirror.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

School board elections are notoriously like this. In my current small city of residence, school board elections stand alone, with no other measures on the ballot, are at an odd time-frame, do not use the regular polling places but combines several precincts into one larger one (which votes a a place different from all of the usual ones) AND all district employees may vote at their place of work. Yeah, that's fair; teachers can vote at their school but parents dropping off their kids (no school buses except for spec ed) cannot vote there. The elections also tend to be poorly advertised, except for employees, who are bombarded by propaganda and reminders (my neighbor is a teacher).

I also remember an extremely close election for a MD senator, a couple of decades ago, which was won by the Democratic candidate by only a few hundred votes. It was discovered that Baltimore (city and county) had purged voter rolls only is precincts that usually voted Republican. Heavily Democratic precincts were left alone, despite post-election evidence of significant numbers of dead voters and the same voters listed at several addresses (voting at each one). The state Democratic machine ignored it all.